“I. ” Lara inhaled, dizzied by his closeness, dazzled by his bright expectation. “Did you show her your burn?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” He eased back.
Lara shivered, deprived of his warmth, as he tugged down the neck of his T-shirt, exposing his throat.
She stared at the smooth white scar, faint against his tan.
“You’re healed,” she said stupidly. “She healed you.”
She pushed back his tawny hair. Even his stitches were gone, his head wound healed as if it had never been.
Lucy had done for him what Lara could not.
Iestyn shrugged, revealing in a single, careless gesture how little the pain and trauma of the past few days had affected him. “She is the targair inghean. But the thing is, she says I’m finfolk. Part finfolk anyway.”
A sliver of ice worked into Lara’s heart. “I don’t understand.”
But she did. Or was afraid she did.
“There are two kinds of merfolk,” Iestyn said. “Selkie, like Dylan, who shed their sealskins to take human form on land. And finfolk, like Morgan, who are total shapeshifters, who can take the form of any creature of the sea.”
Morgan. Lara summoned a vision of the big, brutal Viking with the sea foam hair and golden eyes.
Iestyn’s eyes.
“He looks like you,” she said slowly.
“Actually, I look like him,” Iestyn said. “My mother was selkie. When I Changed for the first time, I took seal form, so I always figured that was it for me. But I guessed I had finfolk blood, on my da’s side. Because of the eyes.”
“You told me your father was human.”
“He was. But Conn thinks maybe Morgan’s sister Morwenna could have been his grandmother.”
Lara’s head spun. “So, Morgan is your. uncle? Great uncle?”
“Something like that.”
“Wouldn’t he have known?”
“I don’t think he cared. He and his sister were estranged after she married a human. None of her children could Change. Morgan probably never even thought about grandchildren.” Iestyn shook his head impatiently. “Anyway, that’s not the point.”
The sliver in her chest dug deeper. “What is the point?”
“I told you.” Iestyn took a deep breath. “I’m part finfolk.
Lucy told me that with her help, I can learn to Change.”
Lara stared at him, her mouth dry, her heart beating up in her throat. She had wanted to restore him to his people.
She had hoped to restore him to himself. Apparently she had succeeded beyond her wildest expectations.
“That’s. ” She sought for a word. “Wonderful.”
“It’s everything. Lara.” Iestyn gripped her arms, the sunlight in his eyes and on his hair, his face lit with joy. “I can go back to sea again.”
“It’s everything.” The words rang in Lara’s head, dogged her footsteps, as she trudged back alone to the hotel. “I can go back to sea again.” A bitter little breeze blew, kicking the shining surface of the water into running caps of foam.
She was not running away, Lara told herself, pausing on the bluffs to watch a bird fold its wings and plunge into the sea.
She was merely taking some time to herself to think.
To regroup. No one would even notice she was gone.
She pul ed a face. If she were honest with herself, that was part of the problem.
Her problem.
She climbed the drive to the inn under storm-weathered trees, over rol ing green lawn. She was genuinely glad for Iestyn. How could she fail to be glad? She loved him.
But he’d never said the words to her. It was unlikely now that he ever would. She would have to find a way to live with that.
Or live without him.
Wearily, she climbed the stairs to their room. The door was unlocked. Kate Begley, she wondered, making the bed?
She almost turned away. She real y wasn’t in the mood for company. But the prospect of the cool, white room, of peace and solitude, beckoned too strongly. With a little sigh, she pushed opened the door.
Jude Zayin sat in the rocker by the window, his big, broad-shouldered body dwarfing the chair. Crowding the room.
He looked up at her entrance, his dark face unreadable.
Her heart stopped.
“Hel o, Lara,” he said. “I’ve come to take you home.”
20
I e s t y n wa n d e r e d a ro u n d t h e c o r n e r o f t h e house, beer in hand, a vague unease ruffling his mood like wind at the edge of a sail. The scent of the salt wood and saltwater blended with the aroma of charcoal-gril ed fish.
The tables set under the trees were set with food and surrounded by the Hunters’ extended family.
He liked it al, the view, the smel s, the mingling of merfolk and humankind. And felt slightly removed from the scene at the same time. He hadn’t been to a lot of family picnics in the past seven years. Or before then. But he felt instinctively that something was missing.
Lara.
A war of badminton was being waged over a net strung between two trees. Four players of varying heights and skil s competed on either side. Iestyn watched as a smal girl in a pink dress dropped her racket and burst into tears.
Her father — Caleb Hunter, Lucy’s brother — scooped her onto his shoulders and resumed play, the delighted child now wrapped like a hat around his head.
Iestyn grinned. But Lara wasn’t there to meet his eyes, to share a smile and the moment.
His sense of dissatisfaction grew. He scanned the yard, searching for her.
Conn and Lucy sat in camp chairs overlooking the ocean, Madagh drowsing beside them.
Iestyn dropped to a crouch at their feet, scratching the hound’s graying muzzle. “Hey, boy. Remember me?”
The old dog rol ed to his back, wriggling like a pup, his thin tail whipping the pine needles.
Iestyn’s throat tightened. He scratched the hound’s wiry bel y. “I thought you would have replaced him by now,” he said to Conn.
The sea lord lived forever. His dogs did not. But there was always a dog, always a deerhound, always named
“Madagh”—hound — at the prince’s side.
Conn smiled his wintry smile. “This one has led something of a charmed life. As, apparently, have you.”
“Yeah.” Iestyn realized, to his horror, that his eyes were wet.
He focused hastily on the dog. “I guess I hoped. I thought Roth and Kera might have made it.”
“We don’t know that they did not,” Conn said. “I have never stopped searching.”
“I never stopped hoping.” Lucy reached out and squeezed Iestyn’s forearm. His right arm, the one she’d healed seven years and a lifetime ago, after he stood with her against the demons. “For seven years, I’ve asked myself if I could have made another choice that would have saved Sanctuary.
What happened to you was my fault.”
Silence descended on the hil above the sea.
“You must not blame yourself,” Conn said. “I have never blamed you. It was my decision to send the younger ones away.”
Iestyn cleared his throat. “It wasn’t your fault,” he said to Lucy. He turned to the prince. “Or yours. It was our decision to turn back. My choice. My responsibility.”
What had Lara said? “Sometimes things happen as part of a larger plan, and we just can’t see it yet.”
“None of us figured the ship would go down. Nobody could have predicted I’d turn up now, after al this time.
Maybe it was an accident. Or luck.” He shrugged. “Or maybe it was something else.”
“Destiny,” Conn said.